Wealth & Income Inequality

Andrew~ said:
In some cases yes, but in most, no. As I said above, businesses don't exist to give employees loads of money. If you time and effort are worth so much in the labour market, that's what you'll get.
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I know they dont. That's why they need to be tightly regulated and better yet, owned by their employees or the state.
 
Silva said:
Bezos wouldn't be there if his parents didn't have 300 grand lying about and his contacts in wall street didn't invest him their friend over other online markets from the early 90s
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What's your point? Yes Bezos got a head start in life because he had 300 grand. Yes Bezos is a really fecking annoying person from the sounds of it. As for his "contacts" if you think he became the youngest VP of DE Shaw through contacts, then you really don't know how hedge fund works but I'll assume he did get there through contacts.

Bezos used his money to revolutionize e-commerce and then cloud computing with AWS. Did he make a huge chunk out of this? You bet he did and you bet he's probably a dick of a person but for society overall he has generated billions and billions of cash. Your argument is quite frankly that of someone who is just pissed at rich folk for being rich.
 
Become Muslim people, and pay zakat. Every single Muslim who has wealth above a certain amount is obliged to pay 2.5% of that annually as a tax. Now that there is no islamic state to pay that tax to, people give it to charity.

Alternatively you can remain heathens :devil: or whatever and just pay a 1% wealth tax.

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I tried to make a joke there, if it didn't work for you, please don't fixate on it, global poverty is bigger than you being offended at a joke. If it really bothers you, PM me and call me a heathen back, but lets not derail the topic.

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I don't buy the arguement of all the big companies will move away, let them move away - long term we stand to benefit. If Amazon move their warehouses they can't deliver the next day, they're suddenly no better than Argos in my eyes. It's not like they pay a load of tax. If facebook moves - will you really miss it? Aren't you really just using it because of FOMO? What will be the financial impact? A few hundred jobs for coders and a thousand IT managers to tell the coder what to do?

Wether its global poverty of the environment, society will have to take a step back in order to take two forwards.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
As we come back to basics, wealth is not finite. So your argument falls flat even at a basic level.

Not everyone can be a billionaires (in theory they can) , but reducing poverty and growing middle class is possible even within current economic parameters.
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seriously how do you not understand inflation it's like the first thing they teach in capitalist school to shout at the left when they promote wealth redistribution and investment in public services
 
@Silva answer this question for me. Do you believe Jeff Bezos has advanced our society overall? Do you understand how just one thing he's brought into the world: AWS, has drastically changed the way we consume media, bank, shop, enabled people to startup their own businesses rich and poor alike. and discover stuff on Mars?
 
I hate that you all are making me defend Bezos. Guy sounds like a proper asshole but the arguments being used here are wrong. I agree with regulation of some sort but not the way you're mentioning it
 
SirAF said:
Am I the only one noticing the stylistic similarity in the posts made by Eboue and Silva? Not only do they share the same ideology, but also the same hatred of capital letters!
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You are not the only one noticing.
 
shamans said:
@Silva answer this question for me. Do you believe Jeff Bezos has advanced our society overall? Do you understand how just one thing he's brought into the world: AWS, has drastically changed the way we consume media, bank, shop and discover stuff on Mars?
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all that would have happened anyway, bezos is the rich person who seized the wealth created there, cloud computing was well on it's way to being built and it's precursors were being worked on when bezos was still just a little sack of shit pissing off his rich parents
 
So we've got the bitcoin guy Andrew, the worlds thickest banker Edgar, the guy who wants to marry AWS.

I really thought MTF was the intellectual right winger. He still is compared to those above but I'm kind of disappointed.
 
shamans said:
@Silva answer this question for me. Do you believe Jeff Bezos has advanced our society overall?
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Advanced our society? Naw. He just updated a 21st century version of the Sears mail-order catalog.
 
shamans said:
I hate that you all are making me defend Bezos. Guy sounds like a proper asshole but the arguments being used here are wrong. I agree with regulation of some sort but not the way you're mentioning it
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Its the usual discussing with them. I also have no love for corporations, finance or rich people in general. But they're so far out there that we can't help but seem to be on the opposing team.
 
Silva said:
all that would have happened anyway, bezos is the rich person who seized the wealth created there, cloud computing was well on it's way to being built and it's precursors were being worked on when bezos was still just a little sack of shit pissing off his rich parents
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Oh ffs man, I'm done here. You're just trying to mess with my head or we fundamentally disagree here. All I'll say is I've been part of plenty of startups with great ideas. Ideas mean shit. Bringing an Idea to the mass, that's where the real talent is.

For an E-Commerce company (that started as a book store) to take the leap of using cloud tech only in house and then offering it as a service is an incredible, incredible thing to do. If you disagree with all of this then there's no use arguing.
 
Raoul said:
Makes sense given that they went from Arkansas Governor and his lawyer wife to ex POTUS on the global speaking circuit.
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Jimmy Carter's peak net worth was only 8 million by comparison. Even HW with all his oil and Saud connections topped around 35-50 if I remember right.
They very clearly have been trying to maximize their profit from politics since 1992 and that 55 mil much more than Carter, who has clearly dedicated his life more to just causes than personal profit or even the Bushes.
 
When I was young I believed in Father Christmas - then I learnt the truth.
When I was older I believed in God - then I learnt about science.
When I went to work I believed in fairness - then I wised up.
When I voted l believed in politcions - now l know the truth.
Now I am old the only thing I believe in is to look after yourself - because that is what everbody else does.

Nothing is fair in this world and money is the most unfair commodity of them all.
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
Advanced our society? Naw. He just updated a 21st century version of the Sears mail-order catalog.
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Well if you're being serious, that's only what you see. It has changed my company and thousands of companies across the world. The guy has changed how modern companies operate on many ways. Like I said, the . 215 million he earns a day is nothing compared to what he has generated

MTF said:
Its the usual discussing with them. I also have no love for corporations, finance or rich people in general. But they're so far out there that we can't help but seem to be on the opposing team.
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Unfortunately. Hopefully not everyone is as deluded!
 
Kentonio said:
I think that might have been a fair statement 5 years ago, but looking around now I'm not seeing apathy, I'm seeing rage and the strong desire for radical change.
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So do I.....particularly as a Brit with the Brexit vote....yet still the liberal elite call for the status quo.....they offer the disenfranchised nothing other than platitudes. Same is true for the States and don't get me started on right wing growth in such as Hungary. Mind you all IMHO and what do I know other than that my generation have had the best of it and those to come will have to sort it out or face the consequences. Having said that however the time was when my generation were the ones charged with altering things and we made a pigs ear of it so I am not confident that the up and coming generation will be less seduced by personal wealth/gain than we were.
 
Eboue said:
So we've got the bitcoin guy Andrew, the worlds thickest banker Edgar, the guy who wants to marry AWS.

I really thought MTF was the intellectual right winger. He still is compared to those above but I'm kind of disappointed.
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:drool::cool:
 
shamans said:
Oh ffs man, I'm done here. You're just trying to mess with my head or we fundamentally disagree here. All I'll say is I've been part of plenty of startups with great ideas. Ideas mean shit. Bringing an Idea to the mass, that's where the real talent is.

For an E-Commerce company (that started as a book store) to take the leap of using cloud tech only in house and then offering it as a service is an incredible, incredible thing to do. If you disagree with all of this then there's no use arguing.
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yes that's the point bezos has the resources to make it work in a capitalist economy over the competition, not because he personally did anything special but because his family investment and his contacts in wall street gave him what you need to succeed in capitalism: capital, something most start ups run out of which is why we have AWS rather than General Magic Services
 
Eboue said:
So we've got the bitcoin guy Andrew, the worlds thickest banker Edgar, the guy who wants to marry AWS.

I really thought MTF was the intellectual right winger. He still is compared to those above but I'm kind of disappointed.
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And the guys using internet saying "meh, we'd have come up with it some time later anyway bruv"
 
Silva said:
yes that's the point bezos has the resources to make it work in a capitalist economy over the competition, not because he personally did anything special but because his family investment and his contacts in wall street gave him what you need to succeed in capitalism: capital, something most start ups run out of which is why we have AWS rather than General Magic Services
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This is like saying Usain Bolt didn't do anything special because he had excellent genetic lineage.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
Ifc, banking has become more complex since olden days abs it's necessary. The scandals are a unnecessary excess that needs to be weeded out of the industry. But saying 'we don't need bankers' is naive and simplistic.
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You say that likes its some small amount when in fact the scandals of the finance industry have completely dwarf Trump's tiny 5billion and have decimated the working class and middle class wealth (in the form of mutual funds, retirement accounts, etc).

Reagan's S+L scandal cost 160 BILLION. The Great Recession (a Clinton+Bush+Dem and Rep establishment legacy) is hard to estimate but it could cost up to 10 TRILLION.

What I don't think you realize is this type of wealth redistribution and corruption is a feature of the financial system that greedy Wall Street wants. See high frequency traders. They are leeching tens of millions every single day out of the economy while providing feck all (that means zero) positive benefits. Its literally just stealing but since its not stealing from a person but rather from the cumulative trading of stocks its still fecking legal for some reason.

Perfect example of the sheer immoral greed coming out of Wall Street and that offers zero benefits and instead is a massive negative drag on the economy. But some rich pricks are getting more rich and most average people have no concept of this immoral theft so it continues.
 
Silva said:
yes that's the point bezos has the resources to make it work in a capitalist economy over the competition, not because he personally did anything special but because his family investment and his contacts in wall street gave him what you need to succeed in capitalism: capital, something most start ups run out of which is why we have AWS rather than General Magic Services
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Really... You realize move towards AWS required no capital but was a huge risk. Now it generates him millions but it was a massive risk at the time. Also, the irony here is he created a way for companies to start without needing capital (no longer need to buy/build your servers in advance and creating an MVP model to demo for venture capitalists is pretty much free in AWS). Now go watch another Netflix documentary about the evil tech CEO's which you can watch for less than 15 dollars HD because ... they save costs by hosting it all on AWS :)
 
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